Monday, February 23, 2015

Rummaging through my old word-documents and found this gem that I wrote a while ago. Not sure what I was thinking...

When
you first meet someone, repeatedly refer to them by a catchy nick-name
that you thought up yourself despite their insistence that you use their
real name.

Walk
up to a Mother who is having a difficult time with her child and explain
to the Mother the “Correct way to parent the child” in a smug manner. Forget the fact that you’ve never had
children yourself. You’ve had years
of experience babysitting.

If you
suspect someone is feeling down or is in pain, start talking to them in a
babyish voice “pretending to sympathize” and say “Oh, I’m soooo sawwie!”
Make your sarcasm very apparent.

Have an
extensive monologue with someone that you meet—don’t allow the person to
speak for a moment. At the end,
tell the person “It was great getting to know you!”
Sound very enthusiastic.

Tell
someone that you speak five languages fluently and then proceed to list
off the 6 or 7
words that you *actually* know from the five different languages.

When
you cannot challenge a person’s argument with logic or evidence, attack them as a person or threaten to delete
their comment. If this doesn't get them
to stop presenting their evidence, suggest
to the person that “They might want to reconsider what you
say or else they’ll burn in hell for all eternity.”.

While
in a discussion that is getting polarized, tell the other person that they
are not an authority on said subject and then proceed to present your
opinions in detail about the subject at hand, despite the fact that you,
too, have no authority on said subject (i.e you don't have a doctorate either).
You’re lengthy opinionating obviously trumps their lengthy opinionating.

Talk
about someone’s mistake over and over again to someone else while
forgetting the 17 mistakes you made earlier today.

After
someone makes a mistake, make the comment “Everyone makes mistakes” in
that annoying voice. Say it like you think the other person hasn't heard
it before.

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

A series of unfortunate events led me to Google’s search
bar, where I began typing in “I feel stupid” and “I am stupid” and “I am
incompetent”. I was in high hopes that I would find a blog post, article or
peer reviewed academic paper deconstructing the idea of stupidity or offering
advice for this state of being. Much to my surprise, I came across a copious
number of websites calling out my own character as “Stupid”. Unfortunately, I
found very few websites where humans were discussing their own stupidity. Humans appear to be rife with narcissism, a self-serving
bias and an overconfidence that is repugnant to myself and the angels.
Thankfully, I did find at least one website where a young chap was discussing
his feelings of stupidity.

The website I found was a yahoo answers chat page. In it, an
unidentified commentator was discussing his performance anxiety while working
at McDonald’s. This individual had been
demoted from cashier, to “hamburger assembler” and then, all the way down the
pecking chain to “floor mopper”. He was lamenting the fact that he was stupid,
clumsy and could not multi-task. His working memory was befuddled as it was
slammed with multiple orders, numbers and customer complaints. He seemed to be
suggesting that he had an inferior brain. Many other commentators were chiming
in, detailing their own mental sluggishness and the problems they encountered.
One thing became readily clear—it was their stupid brains that were the reason
for their stupid actions. This individual’s
post gave rise to an empathetic chorus of like-minded stupidfiles who also
joined the forum, all of whom were lamenting their own plight with personal
stupidity.

Before I go any farther may I extend a BIG CHEERY greeting
to those of you who found this by typing in “I am incompetent” or something
similar. There are simply not enough websites addressing the entry “I am
stupid” and I’m trying to sink my consciousness into why this might be the
case—and perhaps capitalize on it, if such is possible.

Clearly, a lot of people feel deep inside that they are a
lower breed of human and possess the reasoning faculties of a squirrel. They lumber through life, bogged down by a
slow processor doing things that make average and above-average folk grimace
with pain. No one wants to admit that they are a dolt for fear of the pervasive
blight on their reputation; “Once incompetent, always incompetent” as the
famous saying goes. Our research
suggests that stating “Slow Learner” on your resume doesn't bode well for job
prospects.

While stupid cannot be fixed, it certainly can be embraced.
One can learn to live with it and accept it. The idea that comes to mind is
“Self Acceptance”. Smart people accept
themselves…but is this really a shock?!? They sit at their privileged platform
of high-mindedness with the repository of human knowledge as well as mental
machinery that rivals the speed of light. Smart people accept themselves, quite frankly,
because it is easier (they can do it more quickly too).

When you have positive attributes emanating from your identity,
it is hard to feel sorry for yourself.
Dolts, on the other hand, are—by definition—labeled by the most negative
trait of all. Being stupid is like being a blind, bullied child. You struggle
through life; ideas and concepts are not brought to your threshold of awareness
as readily as they are to others. You flounder with math—like adding and
subtracting single digit numbers with the help of a calculator. Connecting
ideas to arrive at a likely conclusion or an answer to a “why question” is difficult
because you can’t readily synthesize patterns that are essentially “smack in
the face” to everyone else.

In my sermon here I want to make it clear that if you have
found this post by typing in the words “I
am incompetent” or “I am stupid”
just accept it. Sit back and take it in. Realize that you’re doing
everything you can do. Like all the rest of us who come from a lineage of
stupid people—or, in my case—a lineage of nothing—we have little recourse.

Sometimes just accepting your dire state of sentience is all
it takes to feel better and move forward with this dreary yet expensive state
of existence. It might be temporarily painful (and mentally torturous) to deal
with people who make you feel bad and unworthy for a trait you likely have
little control of in the first place—but just take this in.

Jesus received 39
lashes for not doing anything wrong. As a stupid person, you haven’t done
anything wrong either but you bear the brunt of society’s blame. Like Jesus,
you are modern society’s scapegoat.

Smart, quick-thinkers
hate you because you are slowing them down at the grocery store as you fumble
through your pockets looking for a credit card you never signed up for. They
hate you at the traffic intersection because you take an extra 1.3 seconds to
register “green light” into your slogging mental processor. Devious marketers can’t stand you because when
they employ their unethical sales tactics on your poor brain and beguile your
naive soul they have to deal with the future angst of ripping someone like you
off.

Finally, I want to tell all stupid people of the world “Do
NOT BE DISCOURAGED” for I came to save you, through my computer screen and make
you accept yourself. No, I didn't send my only son to die for
your stupidity (I sent him to die for your sins). I just want you to know
that I accept you for who you are and am tolerant of your stupidity—you can’t
say this for human beings.

After all, If I made
you stupid to begin with, what does that say about me? It would be my own
error for designing your defective brain and then letting you run freely with
it.